Saturday, 9 December 2017

Hello everyone! Hope you are having a lovely weekend :) I'm feeling super Christmassy this weekend, we had my boyfriends parents over for lunch and then they helped us put a work surface up in the garage. Then we went for a wintery walk and shop, and put the tree and decorations up. I'm really enjoying the warm festive feels!

As usual I'm behind with my nail blogging, so I've already moved onto another design, but I'm enjoying revisiting this one already as I was quite pleased with it! I used Cheers To The Holidays from Fun Lacquer again for my main work Christmas party, as it's a lovely bright party colour without being sparkly, and my dress was already sparkly. After the party I didn't want to take it off so tried out my new Festive 06 stamping plate from Mo You London over the top.

On my index and little finger nails I used this lovely Christmas star pattern which reminds me of the decorative ribbons you put on presents. On my middle fingers I used gold and silver, though the gold isn't that visible at the edges, and for the ring finger and thumb nails I used the advance stamping technique (you can see how here). So I pretty much ended up practising a variety of stamping techniques. I struggled to take this nail art off as I do rather like it, but there are too many nail ideas and not enough time! I also like how my nail shape is looking at the moment - so all in all this was a winner!

Sunday, 3 December 2017

Good evening all, hope you had a lovely weekend. Tonight I'm showing you my fist Christmas nails of 2017! I always start in late November with some not too overtly Christmassy Nails. This time I went for snowflakes for a wintery look.

For this design I wanted a bit of sparkle so dug out my blue holo 'How Deep Is Your Holo' from Fun Lacquer. You can't really see the glitter in the pictures (I tried to capture it in the fourth image). I am working on the picture quality, they should get better from here!

For the snowflake images/patterns I used the Uber Chic Christmas-01 plate, there is a snowflake stamping image and a reverse image, which I used on my ring fingernail. The sizes of the images on the Uber Chic plates cover my nails perfectly which made things easier! Not much else to say on these, I'm very much looking forward to more Christmas nails :)

Thursday, 30 November 2017

Hello nail world! I'm back after almost a month of limited nail art and blogging (there are some swatches on my Claws For Thought Instagram) due to moving house, with some pretty poor quality pictures I'm afraid! It will probably be this way for the next few posts as I get used to my new set up. Today's is worst of all, as the pictures are taken against a variety of window sills and walls!

I wanted to try out Barry M's Liquid Chrome polishes and see how close they are to mirror chrome, and most importantly, whether they would be good back ups for my foil effect polishes I use for stamping. I picked up the gold and silver back ups but couldn't leave out the other two!

Clockwise from top left we have Razzle Dazzle, Glow Crazy, Bright Lights and Rain On Me. These could all be one coaters if applied the right way, but I used two coats for the swatches to help tidy up any visible brush strokes. As expected with this type of polish you need a smooth surface for them to look their best, as imperfections will show up quite clearly. If you look closely at the purple you'll see some little bumps on the middle finger nail (now buffed away).

I found these easy to apply and as always enjoyed the wider brush Barry M use now. Even though I nearly didn't get it Razzle Dazzle has ended up as my favourite! I don't normally go for pinks but this isn't a very pink pink! They are of course not as shiny as mirror chrome, to get that you'll need chrome powder for the best results. However these are a great set of super shiny metallics that are great for Christmas party season.

Above are my stamping attempts with the liquid chrome polishes. I paired them up and stamped them over each other. Glow crazy was the best but Razzle Dazzle was pretty good too. Bright lights and Rain On Me weren't great over each other, they kind of just looked a bit more like each other. It looks pretty close up but I couldn't get any good pictures to demonstrate that. I think these will show up better on other colours, but am not sure if they're quite as good as the foil effect polishes of Barry M's past! Almost, but not quite.

Tuesday, 31 October 2017

OooooOOoo! Happy Halloween! This is my last minute Halloween nail art for this year and I love the way it came out! I took inspiration from clairestelle8 on Instagram, who did the same thing but with a different stamping plate/images. I loved her design so much I had to give it a go!

I started with a layer of off white as a base, and then prepared sponges with colours to sponge onto my nails. I used yellow, turquoise, cobalt blue and shimmery/sparkly blue (colours listed below the pictures). Once dry I used my Festive 16 stamping plate from Mo You London, and stamped some carefully chosen images onto my nails in gold. I then stamped the same images over the gold, but slightly lower, in black stamping polish. Thank goodness for clear stampers!

I'm super pleased with these and feel like I want to keep it on for ages! I love the effect of the moonlight peeking out between the haunted houses etc, and the shiny shadowy effect of the gold. I'm super grateful for the inspiration!

Sunday, 29 October 2017

Hi everyone! Happy almost Halloween! Suitably seasonal nails to show today. I've been super excited/busy lately as we finally got the keys to our new/first house on Thursday! It's been a busy weekend preparing stuff before we move the furniture next weekend. So I've had this nail art on for just over a week.

This is my third sharpie nail art in the last few months, it's such a good technique and gives quite a lot of colour options (I bought a multi-pack!). I used my Festive 16 plate from Mo You London for the pumpkin images which I stamped on in black. The design is a little small for my nails so I stamped it from the top and filled in the bottom with some autumnal copper glitter. I mixed some orange sharpie with nail polish remover on some foil, and used a small brush to paint the pumpkins. I put a top coat on before the sharpie part to protect the image.

For the semi-circles of glitter I used two polishes, Jolly My Roger and Crunk On Copper, both from Painted Polish by Lexi. This was so that I could get a good coverage as the glitter is in a clear base. I could have sponged on the glitter but this seemed easier as the colours are similar. I love both polishes (especially the glitter!) so it also made me feel like I was saving them!

To explain the title, for some reason the orange on these has made me get the oompa loompa song in my head regularly!

Saturday, 21 October 2017

Hi everyone! Hope you are Owl having a good weekend ;) Today's nail art is sparkly and full of owls/owl puns! Once again I'm still wearing this nail art while blogging it, which is very unusual for me, and a sign of how busy we are with the house move. Picking up the keys on Thursday, I can't wait!

So when I was doing a friends nails, she was looking through my stamping plates and found one I forgot I had bought, the UberChic owl plate. I seem to associate owls with autumn (is that just me?) so thought now is the perfect time to try it out. I also had three new holo's from Painted Polish by Lexi (colours listed below the pictures) so thought I'd give them a try too. I've included an image of just the colours below, and at the bottom of this post will do a little mini review.

I painted alternate colours onto my nails, and then used the advances stamping technique with my Uber Mat for the owls, and just regular stamping with white stamping polish on my middle fingers. I really liked how these images came out. The owls are so cute (there are loads more on the plate too) and the images came out nice and crisp. I think the colours worked well too. You can see how to advanced stamp in pictures here.

Colours used: Jolly My Roger - Painted Polish, Yo-Ho Holo - Painted Polish, Love & Liberty - Painted Polish, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Cream Soda - Barry M, Cappuccino - Barry M, Cocoa - Barry M, White Knight - Mo You LondonPainted Polish - Jolly My Roger (copper-ish), Yo-Ho Holo (green) and Love & Liberty (blue)
Just wanted to share my thoughts in the three untried holo's I bought from Rainbow Connection about a month or so. How I managed to go that long without trying them I don't know! All three shades have a lovely consistency, and as you can see from the pictures, are pretty holographic! Love & Liberty is quite opaque, you could probably get away with one coat but I used two here as I could still see a\ bit of nail line in the light. For Jolly My Roger and Yo-Ho Holo two-three coats would be needed.

Saturday, 14 October 2017

So I was having trouble thinking of a title for this, and good old Boaty McBoatFace came to mind! (Google it) I think you can probably guess straight away my theme for these is autumn! I bought an autumn stamping plate from UberChic last year and didn't get to use it that much so am trying to make up for it this year. That said, I'm running out of time before Halloween nail time. What with work trips away and the house move finally approaching I've been super busy!

I started with an off white base (colours listed below the pictures), and then stamped a leafy image across each nail with black stamping polish. As I don't have a lot in the way of autumnal shades of nail polish, I decided to use Sharpies. This is my second Sharpie manicure, and I have to say I love the technique! It's easy to do and you can do a lot with blending colours.

After protecting the images with a quick dry top coat, I picked some autumnal shades and scribbles them onto some foil. With each one I mixed a little nail polish remover using a nail art brush, and lightly painted it onto the leaves. A few of the colours you can't really see as they blended a bit. Once dry (which doesn't take long) I finished the design with a matte top coat. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out :)

Friday, 6 October 2017

Hello everyone, happy Friday! I've finally got onto the autumn nail art band wagon today with some falling leaves stamping with the UberChic Lovely Leaves 01 plate. I've wanted to use this falling leaves design for ages but I tend to have a huge back log of nail ideas! I started with a very pale grey with tiny shimmery flakies, and then stamped the tree images onto my thumb and ring finger nails.

I don't have a lot of autumn leaf type colours, I don't tend to go in for rust and mustard type shades, feeling a little tempted though given how many lovely autumn nail art designs I've seen recently! So with those leafy limitations I decided to go for another colour scheme using a plummy purple and reddish pink. I really liked the way it looked and think the colours worked nicely against the background. I'd recommend as a quick and easy design to do.

I've put the base colour below as I thought it was worthy of it's own picture! It's Paper Route from ILNP (other colours listed at the bottom of this post). To the right is a close up of a thumb nail tree (something that sounds utterly horrifying if you can't see the below picture... but hey Halloween is approaching!).

Sunday, 1 October 2017

Hello all! I'm writing to you in a state of half sleep this evening! I've been away on business in Dublin last week and then out on Friday (which of course takes me two days to recover from now, grr!) so still pretty sleepy!

This was the nail art I wore in Dublin. For the pastel nails I painted them with off white, and then painted purple, blue and yellow onto a stamper, and dabbed them onto my nails. I then used my Back To The 20's 01 stamping plate from Mo you London to stamp some images on top in black. I like the thumbnail best by far, I think I should have used that image on all my nails except the accent.

For the accent I used a lovely shimmery metallic from Cirque Colors. This design was OK but not a favourite of mine. The black smudged a little, and I think the patterns chosen could have worked better. You'll also see a bit of mess round the edges, this was caused by the challenges of a cheap peel of barrier! It made the clean up process more difficult that just using remover and brushes!

Sunday, 24 September 2017

Hi everyone! Happy Sunday! I'm coming to the end of a week off so feeling pretty chilled, but unfortunately I think I'm getting a poorly timed cold... Today I have my holiday nails from Cornwall to show you. They weren't meant to be my holiday nails, but due to lack of time I have now had this on for just over 2 weeks, and still do! Not like me at all, but it will be the same story for the next month or so, so I'm just hoping I will have enough to stop my blog looking to sparse!

For this nail art I took inspiration from Instagram. Unfortunately I can no longer find who it was, despite trawling through loads of my liked photos! So if anyone knows please comment so I can credit them. They had done some silver glitter over bare nails and then added pale purple flowers. I decided to to the same with some advanced stamping using my Uber Mat, and Mo You London Flower Power 03 Plate. You can see how to advanced stamp here.

For the glitter I used two different silvers, to end up with a little bit thicker coverage than the Instagram design, as I just couldn't resist the glitter! I started with an old Barry M limited edition of holo glitter particles in a clear base, and some mixed size glitter in a clear base, polishes are listed below the pictures. In conclusion I like this nail art - which is good considering how long I've been wearing it!

Tuesday, 12 September 2017

So some time ago when I'd just started this blog, and had a big backlog of pictures to use, I did a weekly 'Tropical Tuesday' with various brightly coloured tropical themed nail art ideas. I've not been so good this year, I've had way less tropical themed manicures, but at least I can squeeze one in before the weather gets cold!

My inspiration for this nail art came from Wah Nails on Instagram. They did a lovely design with peaches over pale purpley glitter. I considered doing peaches on all my nails, but decided to go for more variety, sort of fruit machine style.

To make these I drew the fruit onto my Uber Mat, coloured them in with nail polish and a dotting tool, added clear polish, and then peeled them off to stick onto my nails. I had real diffuclty as I used a nail art pen to draw them on, which had gone a bit funny. It was taking so long to do them that the outlines started to dry and crack a little, you can see that on some of the picture below.

So overall I think these are OK but not majorly successful. The peaches came out best so I think I should have stuck to them!